"Robert Rankin - The Greatest Show Off Earth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rankin Robert)

'You honk of fish.'
'Wet fish, not frozen,' said the landlord.
'You dirty pervert.' Liza levelled a foot at Simon's shin. A fine young foot it was too.
Set where a fine young foot should be set. In a white leather shoe with a winkle-picker toe
and a three-inch stiletto heel. Simon took to hopping all around and howling also.
'Perhaps it's part of Simon's act,' said Long Bob the chicken farmer, ducking his head
to grin about the bar.
'Act?' The word was passed about to the accompaniment of shrugging shoulders.
'Act?' said Liza, louder than the rest. 'What act is this?'
'The act I saw him and Raymond rehearsing when I passed by the allotments earlier.
That thing that mime artistes never tire of boring their audiences with. You know the one I
mean.' Long Bob began to mime the mime in question.
'Not bad,' said one of the Roman Candles. 'Can you do the one where you seem to be
walking along, but you stay in the same place?"
'Oh I can do that,' said someone else. 'That's easy.'
'I can juggle with three dead rabbits,' Dick told Liza. 'While balancing a pint of lager
on the end of my wi--.'
 'Simon screamed Liza. 'SIMON!'
But suddenly Simon was nowhere to be seen. The special chemical inside his brain
had made another of its split-second decisions.
Raymond's parcel was missing from the bar counter and all that remained to suggest
that Simon had ever been there, was a half-gone pint, an IOU, an irate girlfriend with a
lurcher once more up her leg, half a dozen full-grown men trying to get out of imaginary
telephone boxes and a haunting smell of fish.
Which was really quite a lot when you come to think about it.

3
Raymond was a sad and sorry schmuck.
He sat, all hunched up, in his beastly little bubble and glared at the planet Venus. He
couldn't see too much of it, but all that he could see, he hated.
His bubble stood on a sturdy tripod affair at the centre of a bleak grey plaza,
surrounded by low, dull, bleak and equally grey buildings of the industrial persuasion. By
swivelling around on his little seat Raymond could make out a whole host of other bubbles
similar to his own. These ranged in size from the teeny-tiny to the dirty-great-big and housed
an amazing assortment of what can only be described as 'things'. Some whirled and thrashed
about in their transparent prisons, others just sat in attitudes of desolation similar to that of
Raymond.
Kidnapped by aliens! This really was about as bad as it could possibly get. Being
taken hostage by Middle Eastern maniacs was a grim enough business. But at least on Earth
there was always some hope of release.
Simon had a theory that when you were taken hostage in the Middle East, your
kidnappers always negotiated a deal with a London publishing house for a share of the
royalties on the bestselling book you would be expected to write as soon as you were
released. Simon said he'd seen a 'leaked' office memo to this effect. And also that most
kidnappings were only supposed to last for a month. It was all the delays with the agents
getting the contracts typed out that held things up.
Raymond was of a far less cynical turn of mind than his friend. Although he had
always wondered how come it was usually journalists who could write well that got
kidnapped.
But this was the planet Venus. Oh dear.